Monday, February 17, 2014

Is it time for English to become our official language?

"Sorry about grandpa; 84-year old Kang Chun Wong who had a conflict with the police and was arrested. The police should have been more sensitive to the elderly, period, but there was a lack of communication. However, Wong must bear some of the responsibility.

He has been in this country nearly fifty years and has not voluntarily learned or was mandated to learn English. However, tax payers are still obligated for providing him a translator. He speaks Spanish and Cantonese only.

It is not feasible for millions of New Yorkers to learn every language; some of which are: Albanian, Cantonese, Creole, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Yeddish, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Bengali, Italian etc. etc. etc.

The only panacea to accommodate everyone is to speak the official language, English, for business purposes. People have the right to speak their language in other settings. No one should be asked to give-up their native language.

Spanish speakers in particular are given too much entitlement, while non-Spanish speakers are forced to learn and listen to Spanish. We dare not complain, because they will claim to be offended.

Imagine how offended and inconvenienced callers were during this situation. On Wednesday, 2/5/14, about 35 people and I were waiting on Merrick Boulevard for a bus.

22 minutes later, I called 311 for assistance. Imagine my frustration; an automated message came on in English. I was eager to speak to someone, but first I had to listen to a message in Spanish. Then and only then I was able to speak to a representative.

About two weeks ago I called the B/P office; Mr. La Mura answered the phone and put me on hold. While on hold, I was forced to listen to a message in Spanish only. When he returned I asked why do callers have to listen to Spanish only. He said, that he did not know and was not aware.

Other entitlement for Spanish speakers only not available to other foreign language speakers: social service application, access a ride system, metro cards with directions for emergency etc, etc, etc.

The restroom symbol pictured below is a universal understanding. Why did it have to be written in Spanish?

Governor Cuomo please put a stop to this DEPENDENCY that is a burden to tax payers and causes DIVISION in the process.

I have a family member who works for the DOE, Louis Armstrong school in Corona. There was a job posting for aides to assist in after school and other positions. When posted one requirement was the person HAD to be bilingual. Tenure was not even considered. Did not know it was LAW now that Spanish is the official language and we must assimilate to others instead of them to the national language..English.

I agree it's all about respect. The people who come here from other countries and make no effort to speak english are being ignorant.

Our city officials are also taking advantage of this to get more voters by accomodating their foreign language.

BTW the people who don't learn our language are the most unpatriotic I've ever met. They are quick to send money "home" and say they will leave as soon as they earn enough to build a house in their countries.

THANK YOU! It's about time someone had the guts to speak out on this subject!

Every foreign person I know, especially the Latinos, gets incredibly pissed off when you suggest that they/ their parents/their grandparents should have/could have worked a little harder to speak English properly. And God-forbid you ever correct their grammer or pronounciation!

But ask them if everything is is multiple languages back in their homeland and the answer is always a resounding "HELL NO!. We're proud to be blah, blah, blah...."

Most of them don't in any way identify with being Americans - they're bi-cultural at best. It's really insulting to people that consider this country to be their homeland and have seen it eroded by foreigners (well - Queens in particular - the rest of the country still feels like America).

In this situation, it is important to know which elected officials have the power to change this multilingual policy.

The multiplicity of languages on your ballots is the result of state legislation. You must call your State Assembly Member or Senator to request that they sponsor a bill making ballots English-only. If your elected representative refuses, give them negative publicity online.

City agencies must answer to the Mayor, so it is the mayor's office that your should be calling in order to force 311 to be English-only.

Again, if Mayor De Blasio insists on ending every press conference with badly accented pandering, it is your duty to generate a barrage of negative publicity to change things.

Your City Council Member can sponsor a bill or resolution to promote English-only services, but he or she is probably kissing up to the new Speaker right now, so don't expect much from them. Again, generate negative publicity until your Council Member stands up to De Blasio, Melissa Mark-Viversity and Make The Road.

3rd worlders- the people who don't speak English, are the slave class.

There is absolutely no reason for them to speak English because there reason for being here is to simply work. If people of the slave class don't learn English it's not a problem, they'll simply work their whole lives and pass away.

The system will accommodate them under the presumption they will have children and their children will be socially engineered in the public school system and learn English etc......

BUT OF COURSE NY IS NOT ONE OF THOSE STATES! God forbid if anyone in NY would learn to speak some damn English! "I no speak english, tu hablas espanol!" NEVER WILL NY EVER ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO ADAPT TO AMERICAN SOCIETY!

The problem is that we don't have any legislation in place that mandates English as the official language of this nation. Until that occurs (if ever) there will be no unification and we will have to continue to cater to every other language spoken. This is more than a problem at the local and state level. You need to mandate it nationally or this crap will continue to happen.

Joe- You'd have to translate that in many languages...LOL! Has anyone ever noticed how quick the Koreans are to post Korea's flag everywhere in their places of business, but not once will they ever put up a picture of America's flag? Not many foreigners wave the American flag or ever put it up outside their homes! This is from a pew study:

In 2011, about two-thirds of the more than 5 million legal Mexican immigrants eligible for citizenship had not yet naturalized, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center. The citizenship rates among legal non-Mexican immigrants were nearly double, but roughly a third of those from other countries had still not become citizens either.

Maybe its me, but i get the impression that the people who argue that every New Yorker should speak English are no longer smart enough to live in New York. Also i get the impression that some Police Officers should not work in NYC.

I recall attending a Julissa Ferrara event in which she identified herself as a "BLACKTINA" also there was no American flag in the auditorium. Curious I asked a stage hand where the flag was. His reply? "They Didn't want it" It was a black history commemoration.

I'm going to throw myself into the fray. Please realize that a lot of the people that come from Spanish speaking countries are at a disadvantage because they only have a 3rd or 5th grade education in their own language. In their cultures, it is common for parents to pull them out of school to work and to help the family make money. We can't change the cultures of other countries, but that is where the problem lies. Immigrants from countries where education is a priority generally have an easier time learning English. For example, you won't find many German immigrants in the country for decades that haven't picked up the language.

Perfectly agreed, but this guy has been living here for FIFTY YEARS! Plus, these were UNIFORMED COPS who stopped him, so it should have been evident that running away was wrong when they were writing him the citation, even if he didn't know what he was being stopped for.

These particular cops were necessarily the best or the brightest, but none of us saw how this went down, there was a history of jaywalking-related accidents in this area, and it's hard to believe that there was any incentive to create all this trouble over an ordinary old man for no reason.

Living in any country - heck, even TRAVELING in a country, requires that we comply with the law. Ignorance is no excuse.

LEARN FUCKING ENGLISH. You are not in your shit hole country anymore.-----------------------------------

Amen to that. Joe, you should give classes on how to curse in English! Seriously. I bet you you'd have them lining up outside the door! That would make learning English fun. The immigrants screaming their heads of shouting obscenities. I'd pay to audit your classes just for the entertainment watching and listening.

I studied French 3 years in HS and 2 years in College and when I went to Paris I couldn't understand anything the natives and even uneducated French immigrants on the street were saying. They definitely weren't reciting the poetry of Lamartine. Very frustrating. When I got back, I took private lessons with a native Parisian who was living in the Upper West Side. Best thing I ever did. I asked him to teach me for one hour how to curse in French:

Fils de putain (son of a whore) or for English: Son of a bitch. Even more authentic: Fils de pute!! [Fees da poot!]

Man o man, I would have loved to have heard that 84 year old alte kakker Kang Chun Wong mouth off to the cops: "Keep your shitty hands off me you motherfuckers!"

Ooh, I love the unnecessary injection of native American tongues! Too bad they all spoke different languages themselves. Unification of the people in this nation will only be possible if English is uniformly spoken.

We rebelled against oppressive England yet we totally embrace and defend the language of our former oppressor. Also, much of our land was native Spanish for a long time, Florida and the West.

I worked for a utility. By state mandate we had to make our communications in two languages, English by default and Spanish by request. That costs a lot of money...- Accounts had to be coded as Spanish default in many systems.- Everything touching the customer had to be redone in Spanish. That costs a ton of money. One of the reasons is that Spanish has a few characters not normally available on a regular keyboard.- Call center people were really not paid too much. When my company was mandated to handle Spanish calls the call center people (many of whom already spoke Spanish) made a case that they should be paid more because of their bilinguality. This almost doubled their pay.- Signs had to be replaced with bilingual signs.This Spanish mandate cost millions.

Then other non-English people spoke up, namely Russian, Mandarin, and Hindi speakers. They were not given the same treatment as Spanish only people. These folks get translators from a service for phone calls and no communications in their language. This is a flagrant catering to Spanish only.

I totally agree with you wholeheartedly. I say this because, not to long ago I had to have severe water damage repaired throughout my apt. in Jamaica, well the management of my building sent workers who didn't speak any English, and they themselves have heavy broken English that is barely audible. I said to management that I can't even communicate with these people. I said is this some kind of joint. I then said please send someone who I can speak to that understands me and that I can understand. Well, they took issue with this and complained that I was some kind of racist. I said that's ridiculous I only want to be able to communicate properly so that there won't be any problems. So, they sent a contractor who spoke both Spanish and English, and I said that's much better. When the bi-lingual contractor came he asked me if it was ok if he spoke in Spanish to the other workers and I felt like I was in the wrong for suggesting that the other contractors where inadequate. I shouldn't have gone through this nightmare at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm in foreign land. First of all I am not an unreasonable person, I only want to be treated properly in my own country.

I read this article about the nuts failing to translate the warning in Spanish.....it is bad that she and her kids were murdered, however, if they would learn English, then maybe her life would've been saved! You can't go in everywhere and expect someone to just automatically cater to you. What if you're from a small country where only a few people speak your language? Then what? You can't expect people to bend over backwards because you decided to leave your country and come to a mostly English speaking country.

Why can't this issue be put to a vote, so the average US citizen/taxpayer (the people who have to pay for all of these translations)can have a say? So sick of these politicians pandering to these illegals and people who live here because of the money, but pledge allegiance to their homeland. I'm waiting for any politician to grow a pair and sponsor this issue for a ballot vote.

To succeed socially and economically, one must be able to communicate with those around you. Mandating English should be the LAST step in the process of "linguistic unification." First, on a national level,we must agree that not being able to communicate in English creates a socioeconomic disadvantage that can only be overcome with education. Congress must allocate funding for every school, at every level, to teach ESL classes. Additional funding for non-profit community outreach groups must be allocated for adult ESL classes. Tax credits must then be offered to non-English speakers, to ensure participationOnce at least 90-95% of non-English speakers demonstrate a proficiency in English, congress can introduce an English as our national language bill. Billions will have been spent, years will have passed, new waves of immigrants will need language training...It's like trying to hold back the sea.

Business is done in English in the United States. Maybe these foreigners would be more successful and make more money (yes, that's why they're here) if they learned English. Why not take all the money spent on translation and interpreters and use those funds to run English classes in the schools and libraries? If the foreigners don't take advantage of this, it's on them.

For years, immigrants have come to America to contribute to this nation and work to fulfill the dream of a better life for themselves and their families. If lawmakers declare English the national language, they will be turning their backs on this common dream as well as their responsibility for the security and safety of the entire nation. People just be ignorant towards other languages.

Why should the U.S. spend untold millions of dollars catering to people who don't speak our language? I am sick and tired of having to waste my time going through a whole menu of "For Language A, press 1", "For Language B, press 2", etc. every time you call a bank or other large business or go to an ATM machine. I am sick and tired of having to pay for translators for people too lazy to apply themselves to learning the language of their new home country. I am sick and tired of the self-imposed bubble ghettos these immigrants have made themselves so that they can be insular and NOT have to assimilate. The only assimilation I see from them is them to my taxpayer money for resources and services they should not need. Why are we admitting unskilled welfare sponges to the U.S. anyway? It used to be that they had to have a job or a sponsor lined up to emigrate here. Where did that go by the wayside?

For years, immigrants have come to America to contribute to this nation and work..............

The common language is english. If people want to contribute and work it should be in ENGLISH. Do people come to American to get paid in pesos or yen??? No they want the good old US Dollar. (that's english) and shame shame shame on anyone who comes to this country and doesn't try to learn the language.

My parents came here 50 years ago and priority number 1 was to learn the language. We always kept our culture and our native tongue alive and well but first and foremost was to assimilate and appreciate your new country.

It doesn't have to be a Colombian Bakery. I was at a Boston Market in Queens where English-speaking customers could not be served, because, I guess, the English-capable staff did not show up. I had to ask a bilingual customer to translate for me.

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